


Song

by Moons-and-Glassware (PorcelainCas)



Category: Percy Jackson and the Olympians & Related Fandoms - All Media Types
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Coping, Five Stages of Grief, Gen, Post-The Burning Maze (Trials of Apollo), Rebirth
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 18:19:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,630
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16351721
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PorcelainCas/pseuds/Moons-and-Glassware
Summary: He can’t be dead over a pair of shoes. A pair of stupid shoes.





	Song

**Author's Note:**

> this has been sitting around since I finished tBM, and I've finally felt guilty enough to finish it.
> 
> the title was originally "five stages", but I changed it as a reference to the LoZ fitting "Song of Healing" soundtrack, which I listened to while writing the rest of this. [This](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LUq49NecOeE) version is absolutely fantastic.

i.

He’s not dead. He can’t be dead. Not after everything they’ve gone through with Gaea and the giants – he can’t end up dead with a spear embedded in his back and a megalomaniac god-emperor standing over his prone arrow-struck body with a bored expression on his face.

Oh gods.

She vaguely hears Caligula giving orders to kill her, and she thinks that this is it. She draws her knife, ready to go down fighting even if the pandai can shoot faster than she can think. Apollo steps in front of her and suddenly she wants to scream at him _where were you for Jason?_ Then, a cold gust of wind swirls around her, lifting her off her feet and whisking her away from the scene so fast that she can barely breathe.

 

He can’t be dead over a pair of shoes. A pair of stupid shoes.

Apollo says that he’s dead. Even Meg doesn’t argue.

Apollo, the god of healing, can’t heal him – _won’t_ heal him.

She never wants to see Apollo again.

 

ii.

A wound to the back, just like how Caligula did it.

She feels the rush of adrenaline even before she stabs Medea, the fire coursing through her blood and giving her an extra rush. She’s not sure if it’s all hers, or a part of it is Helios, the Titan of the sun giving her his strength. Her knife hits the mark and she twists it upon entry into its fleshy target. The sorceress makes a sound like a choked off gasp, turning to look at Piper with wide, shocked eyes, reaching out to grab her.

Piper only shoves her dying body away from her. _That was for Jason_.

Now that she is lying on the ground, blood forming at the side of her lip, the sorceress doesn’t look so powerful. Her eyes are wild, flickering between her and the army that Piper had cleverly gathered before heading into this mission like she knew that she had lost. Piper kneels down beside Medea, staring at her broken body, and wondering how much destruction she could have prevented if she had mustered up the courage to kill her back when they first met in the department store. Turning her over, she yanks the Katoptris out without gusto. The dark red that decorates her blade is the most vibrant colour that Piper has seen all week.

She stares at Medea’s dying body and feels compelled to speak. “One good stab in the back deserves another,” she finds herself saying, lips curled in a sneer. It’s with a vindictive pleasure that leads Piper to kiss her on the cheek, pressing her unaffectionate lips onto Medea’s smooth skin. “I’d tell you to say hello to Jason for me, but he’ll be in Elysium.” She smiles sweetly at the dying sorceress when she delivers the next words. “You…won’t.”

Medea’s eyes blink rapidly, and Piper thinks with satisfaction that she can detect a note of fear before Medea’s lights flicker out.

She lets go out the breath that she doesn’t realize that she’s been holding. It’s the first time Piper has felt such pure exhilarating enjoyment out of someone’s death, and she could get used to this feeling.

 

iii.

She keeps thinking about the Physician’s Cure.

It’s been months into her stay in Oklahoma, and she’s getting used to the quietness. The loneliness. Sure, there are occasional monsters knocking on her door, but nothing she can’t handle on her own after all she’s been through.

If only she’d had the Physician’s Cure somehow… If only she’d had _something_ at the time.

She rolls over in her bed, catching sight of her knife on the desk beside her. The Katoptris gleams golden in the dim moonlight. A glimpse of a vision, maybe. She picks it up, tilting it so she can see her own reflection staring back at her. She waits for something to show up: another way to bring Jason back, even months after his death or an image to confirm her own guilt. Her own bloody, inert hands.

But there’s nothing. She holds the knife a little longer before she gives up, placing it down on the desk.

She knows. She’s not stupid. She knows that there are some wounds that can’t be healed, no matter how far she searches.

But the knowledge doesn’t stop her chest from aching, and until she has hit a dead end, she won’t stop looking.

 

iv.

She doesn’t know why she breaks when she returns to camp in the summer.

Piper has been okay for the past while, if she said so herself. But now she pauses, drinking in the sight of the rolling green meadows, the dragon curled around the pine tree, the orange figures in the background, and the sound of laughter and shouting in the distance. And suddenly, she feels disorientated, like Medea herself has picked her up and thrown her into a wall.

She exhales and walks through the magical barrier into Camp Half-Blood, and she continues walking onwards to the cabins. People greet her as they pass by, and she nods, her lips pulling politely into an automatic smile. She can’t bring herself to engage with anyone, even when she sees Annabeth. There’s an empty hole gnawing at her that grows bigger with each step that she takes. Is this what she had been nourishing, the whole time in Oklahoma? This vacuum, so sharp in its hollowness that she can feel it crawling up into her throat?

It’s only when she reaches the cabins that she realizes where her feet have been taking her. Cabin One stands alone and aloof in front of her. There are spiderwebs, she notices, on the windows. If she opens the door, she would be enveloped in dust. Thalia has probably come by since the event, and she must have collected all of his belongings. The cabin is most likely empty, devoid of the life it used to contain.

And that’s when she feels everything rising up at once, all the anger, the pain, the sadness, the regret, and she nearly collapses in front of the Cabin, sobbing freely into both palms of her hands.

 

v.

She finds him on her way home from school, trudging the same path as she always has for the past school year. The image is astonishingly sharp: a young man dressed in all black, surrounded by the dying shades of the autumn trees. She wishes she could take a photograph to capture the moment, but she’s certain that he wouldn’t like it very much.

“Nico,” she greets when she nears him. “What are you doing here?”

He shrugs, both hands tucked in the pockets of his aviator jacket. “I’m on a quest,” he explains. “I was nearby, and I heard you were here so… I thought I would drop by.”

“Want to stop over at my place to eat?” Piper offers, wondering if he’s questing by himself. It wouldn’t be unusual for him, but it still doesn’t sound very safe.

“I’m good. Will and I just had something to eat. I just wanted to tell you…I saw Jason.”

Piper feels like her heart is going to stop. “What?” she asks, her voice lowering to a hush. Nico nods solemnly.

“We had to get through the Underworld. And that’s when I saw him. He was there – the River Lethe.”

She thinks she knows where this is going, and her throat feels dry. She doesn’t know what to say or what to think. From the look of it, Nico doesn’t look too sure of himself either.

Nico quickly clarifies his statement. “I didn’t see _him_. When someone decides to cross the river, they give up their form they had in life, so only their essence remains. That’s what I saw. I saw his essence – his soul. I felt his soul. Either way, it was Jason. And when he crossed, he was gone. I thought you deserved to know.” He’s rambling at this point, and Piper is reminded that it’s not just her and Leo that felt the crushing impact of his death. She knows that Nico was good friends with him too, and she can’t imagine what he had gone through when the news reached him.

“So, he’s chosen rebirth,” Piper says aloud, surprised by how startlingly… _calm_ she feels about this. She had imagined that it would devastate her – knowing that he had gone onwards to somewhere she doesn’t know, somewhere that would complete the irreversibility that comes with death. But somewhere along the way, she thinks that she had already accepted that he was gone forever.

She’s silent for a while, feeling the permanence set into her body, and she realizes that she doesn’t feel so different from ten minutes ago. Sure, there’s a gentle nudge in her heart, like somewhere buried deep is the pain waiting for the perfect moment to resurface, but for now, she thinks she’s okay.

“Thank you,” she finally says, “for telling me.” There’s a truth ringing to her words, and she gives Nico a smile that he returns hesitantly.

They bid goodbye after that, and Piper continues the rest of the way home in quiet solitude. When she’s home, she reaches for the Katoptris resting demurely at the bottom of her backpack, wondering if it’s going to show her an image from Jason’s new life.

She flicks it around for a bit, but it remains stubbornly dull, and when Piper puts the knife away, she thinks that maybe after all, she’s okay with that – with not knowing anything about his whereabouts or his new life. After all, isn’t that what rebirth is for?

The dull pain twinges when she thinks about him. But, she thinks, she’s going to be okay.

**Author's Note:**

> *Important Note*
> 
> "Later in her life, Kübler-Ross noted that the stages are not a linear and predictable progression and that she regretted writing them in a way that was misunderstood. "Kübler-Ross originally saw these stages as reflecting how people cope with illness and dying," observed grief researcher Kenneth J. Doka, "not as reflections of how people grieve."" [x](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/K%C3%BCbler-Ross_model)


End file.
